<img src="http://www.animeuknews.net/img/uploaded/2015-11-12Maid Sama cover.jpg">
<b>Review of Maid-Sama! #1 by Demelza</b>
<em>Maid Sama!</em> is a series that I’d heard a lot about but never made the effort to read until fairly recently. After liking what I sampled I was eager to watch the anime adaption too. It turns out that deciding to watch the first DVD set of <em>Maid Sama!</em>, released by <em>MVM</em>, was a very good choice as I quickly fell in love with it.
The show tells the story of Misaki Ayuzawa, who is the student council president of Seika High and works part-time at a maid café, known as <em>Maid Latte,</em> to help support her financially poor family. The school was previously an all-boys school, thus Misaki is the first female student council president and endeavors to make Seika High a more welcoming and comfortable place for the girls. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of most of the guys coming to dislike Misaki due to her strict rulings. Misaki tends to be somewhat unfairly harsh on the guys at times but this is down to her father leaving the family with a huge debt, leading Misaki to develop angry feelings toward all males.
Due to the fact Misaki holds such a high position within Seika High she doesn’t want anyone to know about her job at <em>Maid Latte</em> and does whatever she can to prevent her friends or other students discovering how she spends her time after school. However, one day Misaki’s luck runs out when her secret is discovered by Takumi Usui. Takumi isn’t someone who is massively fussed by Misaki’s ruling of the school and decides to keep her secret to himself while trying to learn more about this somewhat peculiar girl. Although Takumi accepts and understands Misaki’s reasons for not wanting anyone to know about her work at<em> Maid Latte</em>, he also wishes to prove to Misaki that her part-time job is nothing to be ashamed of.
This set-up makes for a fairly interesting story. On the one hand we have Misaki’s day-to-day school life and how she must deal with the troublesome boys of Seika High, but also her life at <em>Maid Latte</em> and those she works with. Both environments give us an interesting cast of characters and while many of them are fairly generic shojo types, they’re also all a great deal of fun to watch. For example, we have the boss of <em>Maid Latte</em>, Satsuki Hyoudou, who is somewhat of an adoptive mother to Misaki and the driving force behind encouraging her friendship with Takumi. Satsuki often acts like the youngest of the <em>Maid Latte</em> members but she can be pretty scary if something happens to a member of her staff. Misaki’s two school friends, Sakura and Shizuko, are also pretty typical shojo characters. Sakura is the typical cute and careless girl, while Shizuko is the scary girl with glasses, but both are fun to watch and that’s what counts.
The first part of <em>Maid Sama!</em> contains the initial 14 episodes of the series. From first impressions it wouldn’t be unfair to say that the show is a pretty generic shojo title, though not in a bad way. I think the beauty of <em>Maid Sama!</em> is that it never goes out of its way to be something it isn’t. It actively plays up the heavy shojo aspects of the show with thousands of cute flowers, chibi characters, and the massive overreactions to things that many shojo series tend to be home to. However, Misaki slightly breaks the trend of a normal romance story by being so strong and hot-headed that she’s rarely in need of Takumi riding to the rescue. This in fact leads to a few funny scenes when Takumi is about to burst in to save the day only to find that Misaki is perfectly fine. It’s something fairly small in the grand scheme of things but ultimately it does leave me with more respect for <em>Maid Sama!</em> than I might have otherwise have had.
<em>Maid Sama!</em> has been adapted by <em>J.C.Staff</em>, who have done a great job of keeping the series faithful to the original manga - when they’ve chosen to follow the source anyway. At present I have only read the first two volumes of the <em>Maid Sama!</em> manga and can say that the anime is not a straight adaptation as it moves stories around to where the studio feels they work, and introduces some characters much earlier than we meet them in the original. However, this isn’t a bad thing as nothing about the show feels out of place. If I’d never read the manga I wouldn’t have known the difference due to the fact that the anime works brilliantly the way it is. Ultimately the anime offers something new for those who already know the story and is a pretty easy sell to those who don't. The animation for <em>Maid Sama!</em> is a little lax when it comes to backgrounds: they generally don’t have a lot of detail to them much of the time. That said, this simplicity means that the cast stand out nicely from the backdrops. Character designs and the overall show looks smooth and vibrant in colour and by the end of my viewing, I started to realise that the simplistic feel actually suits <em>Maid Sama! </em>really well.
The one thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the soundtrack - and boy does <em>Maid Sama!</em> have an impressive soundtrack. Sound director Satoshi Motoyama has worked on an impressive catalog of shows, including <em>From The New World</em>, <em>Sunday Without God</em>, <em>Skip Beat!</em>, and <em>Death Parade</em> to name just a few, and <em>Maid Sama!</em> showcases his abilities nicely with the wide range of music on offer. A lot of the soundtrack is a little overused, and if you don’t like it then you’re a bit stuck as you’ll be hearing it a lot, but it does succeed in adding to the fun feel that <em>Maid Sama!</em> gives off with every single episode.
Misaki is voiced by Ayumi Fujimura in Japanese (Mataro Mankanshoku in <em>Kill la Kill</em>, Roe2 in <em>Log Horizon S</em>eason 2) and she offers a brilliant performance with just the right tone for when Misaki is angry compared to her normal speech. Nobuhiko Okamoto (Yoichi Saotome in <em>Seraph of the End</em>) as Takumi also does a fine job, with Takumi being a suitably quiet character but having a certain soothing undertone that works out brilliantly for his character. I wish I had such praise for the dub as sadly Monica Rial (Mitsuki Nase in <em>Beyond the Boundary</em>) does not suit Misaki as much as her original Japanese VA. Monica can’t pull off the sense of rage that Ayumi can when Misaki is angry and about to lecture her fellow students, nor can she offer enough vocal difference between Misaki in a fit of anger to Misaki being chipper during her work at <em>Maid Latte</em>. Sadly this does ruin the character a bit for me. The rest of the dubbed cast is passable and I can happily say that David Matranga (Wave in <em>Akame ga Kill!</em>) makes a fantastic Takumi, although I’d still heavily recommend watching in Japanese because of Misaki.
Regarding the release itself, this part sadly has no extras to speak of aside from a few trailers. While it includes 14 episodes of the series, the fourteenth episode feels like a bit of a weird stopping point - especially as there is a massive cliffhanger. While it has left me excited for the next part I still feel like Episode 13 would have been a more natural stopping point between releases.
Overall I’ve come away from <em>Maid Sama!</em> excited and deeply in love with the story. Yes it’s a cheesy, generic, fairly standard shojo series but it’s all of those things in the very best ways and it left me with a big smile on my face after every episode. Despite the fact that the series spends half of its time in a maid café, there is fairly little in the way of fan service, making <em>Maid Sama! </em>a much more family friendly experience than you might expect and something I could quite happily recommend to anyone who likes this type of show.<br>
<b>Final score: 7 out of 10</b>
<b>Additional screencaps</b>
<img src="http://www.animeuknews.net/img/uploaded/screens/2015-10-22Maid Sama 2.jpg">
<img src="http://www.animeuknews.net/img/uploaded/screens/2015-10-22Maid Sama 3.jpg">
<img src="http://www.animeuknews.net/img/uploaded/screens/2015-10-27Maid Sama 1.jpg">
<b>Review of Maid-Sama! #1 by Demelza</b>
<em>Maid Sama!</em> is a series that I’d heard a lot about but never made the effort to read until fairly recently. After liking what I sampled I was eager to watch the anime adaption too. It turns out that deciding to watch the first DVD set of <em>Maid Sama!</em>, released by <em>MVM</em>, was a very good choice as I quickly fell in love with it.
The show tells the story of Misaki Ayuzawa, who is the student council president of Seika High and works part-time at a maid café, known as <em>Maid Latte,</em> to help support her financially poor family. The school was previously an all-boys school, thus Misaki is the first female student council president and endeavors to make Seika High a more welcoming and comfortable place for the girls. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of most of the guys coming to dislike Misaki due to her strict rulings. Misaki tends to be somewhat unfairly harsh on the guys at times but this is down to her father leaving the family with a huge debt, leading Misaki to develop angry feelings toward all males.
Due to the fact Misaki holds such a high position within Seika High she doesn’t want anyone to know about her job at <em>Maid Latte</em> and does whatever she can to prevent her friends or other students discovering how she spends her time after school. However, one day Misaki’s luck runs out when her secret is discovered by Takumi Usui. Takumi isn’t someone who is massively fussed by Misaki’s ruling of the school and decides to keep her secret to himself while trying to learn more about this somewhat peculiar girl. Although Takumi accepts and understands Misaki’s reasons for not wanting anyone to know about her work at<em> Maid Latte</em>, he also wishes to prove to Misaki that her part-time job is nothing to be ashamed of.
This set-up makes for a fairly interesting story. On the one hand we have Misaki’s day-to-day school life and how she must deal with the troublesome boys of Seika High, but also her life at <em>Maid Latte</em> and those she works with. Both environments give us an interesting cast of characters and while many of them are fairly generic shojo types, they’re also all a great deal of fun to watch. For example, we have the boss of <em>Maid Latte</em>, Satsuki Hyoudou, who is somewhat of an adoptive mother to Misaki and the driving force behind encouraging her friendship with Takumi. Satsuki often acts like the youngest of the <em>Maid Latte</em> members but she can be pretty scary if something happens to a member of her staff. Misaki’s two school friends, Sakura and Shizuko, are also pretty typical shojo characters. Sakura is the typical cute and careless girl, while Shizuko is the scary girl with glasses, but both are fun to watch and that’s what counts.
The first part of <em>Maid Sama!</em> contains the initial 14 episodes of the series. From first impressions it wouldn’t be unfair to say that the show is a pretty generic shojo title, though not in a bad way. I think the beauty of <em>Maid Sama!</em> is that it never goes out of its way to be something it isn’t. It actively plays up the heavy shojo aspects of the show with thousands of cute flowers, chibi characters, and the massive overreactions to things that many shojo series tend to be home to. However, Misaki slightly breaks the trend of a normal romance story by being so strong and hot-headed that she’s rarely in need of Takumi riding to the rescue. This in fact leads to a few funny scenes when Takumi is about to burst in to save the day only to find that Misaki is perfectly fine. It’s something fairly small in the grand scheme of things but ultimately it does leave me with more respect for <em>Maid Sama!</em> than I might have otherwise have had.
<em>Maid Sama!</em> has been adapted by <em>J.C.Staff</em>, who have done a great job of keeping the series faithful to the original manga - when they’ve chosen to follow the source anyway. At present I have only read the first two volumes of the <em>Maid Sama!</em> manga and can say that the anime is not a straight adaptation as it moves stories around to where the studio feels they work, and introduces some characters much earlier than we meet them in the original. However, this isn’t a bad thing as nothing about the show feels out of place. If I’d never read the manga I wouldn’t have known the difference due to the fact that the anime works brilliantly the way it is. Ultimately the anime offers something new for those who already know the story and is a pretty easy sell to those who don't. The animation for <em>Maid Sama!</em> is a little lax when it comes to backgrounds: they generally don’t have a lot of detail to them much of the time. That said, this simplicity means that the cast stand out nicely from the backdrops. Character designs and the overall show looks smooth and vibrant in colour and by the end of my viewing, I started to realise that the simplistic feel actually suits <em>Maid Sama! </em>really well.
The one thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the soundtrack - and boy does <em>Maid Sama!</em> have an impressive soundtrack. Sound director Satoshi Motoyama has worked on an impressive catalog of shows, including <em>From The New World</em>, <em>Sunday Without God</em>, <em>Skip Beat!</em>, and <em>Death Parade</em> to name just a few, and <em>Maid Sama!</em> showcases his abilities nicely with the wide range of music on offer. A lot of the soundtrack is a little overused, and if you don’t like it then you’re a bit stuck as you’ll be hearing it a lot, but it does succeed in adding to the fun feel that <em>Maid Sama!</em> gives off with every single episode.
Misaki is voiced by Ayumi Fujimura in Japanese (Mataro Mankanshoku in <em>Kill la Kill</em>, Roe2 in <em>Log Horizon S</em>eason 2) and she offers a brilliant performance with just the right tone for when Misaki is angry compared to her normal speech. Nobuhiko Okamoto (Yoichi Saotome in <em>Seraph of the End</em>) as Takumi also does a fine job, with Takumi being a suitably quiet character but having a certain soothing undertone that works out brilliantly for his character. I wish I had such praise for the dub as sadly Monica Rial (Mitsuki Nase in <em>Beyond the Boundary</em>) does not suit Misaki as much as her original Japanese VA. Monica can’t pull off the sense of rage that Ayumi can when Misaki is angry and about to lecture her fellow students, nor can she offer enough vocal difference between Misaki in a fit of anger to Misaki being chipper during her work at <em>Maid Latte</em>. Sadly this does ruin the character a bit for me. The rest of the dubbed cast is passable and I can happily say that David Matranga (Wave in <em>Akame ga Kill!</em>) makes a fantastic Takumi, although I’d still heavily recommend watching in Japanese because of Misaki.
Regarding the release itself, this part sadly has no extras to speak of aside from a few trailers. While it includes 14 episodes of the series, the fourteenth episode feels like a bit of a weird stopping point - especially as there is a massive cliffhanger. While it has left me excited for the next part I still feel like Episode 13 would have been a more natural stopping point between releases.
Overall I’ve come away from <em>Maid Sama!</em> excited and deeply in love with the story. Yes it’s a cheesy, generic, fairly standard shojo series but it’s all of those things in the very best ways and it left me with a big smile on my face after every episode. Despite the fact that the series spends half of its time in a maid café, there is fairly little in the way of fan service, making <em>Maid Sama! </em>a much more family friendly experience than you might expect and something I could quite happily recommend to anyone who likes this type of show.<br>
<b>Final score: 7 out of 10</b>
<b>Additional screencaps</b>
<img src="http://www.animeuknews.net/img/uploaded/screens/2015-10-22Maid Sama 2.jpg">
<img src="http://www.animeuknews.net/img/uploaded/screens/2015-10-22Maid Sama 3.jpg">
<img src="http://www.animeuknews.net/img/uploaded/screens/2015-10-27Maid Sama 1.jpg">